


coûter les yeux de la tête

by flannypack



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate universe - Mafia, Animal Traits, Conspiracy, Emotional Manipulation, How Do I Tag, Human Trafficking, Hybrids, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rich Hwang Hyunjin, Rich Lee Minho | Lee Know, Unhealthy Relationships, Which is basically, but its not a "mafia au" the mafia is barely mentioned, hybrid trafficking, i guess?, lol, no seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:21:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25322332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flannypack/pseuds/flannypack
Summary: "‘Coûter les yeux de la tête’ literally means that something costs the eyes in your head – it’s a price that’s unreasonable. The English equivalent is ‘to cost an arm and a leg’."-Chan didn’t usually like to spend a lot of his energy concerning himself with how another person looked, but with a wash of intrigue that made the back of his neck warmly flush, Chan was growing into the realization that Hwang Hyunjin was goddamn staggering.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Hwang Hyunjin, Hwang Hyunjin & Lee Minho | Lee Know, Hwang Hyunjin/Kim Seungmin, Hwang Hyunjin/Kim Seungmin/Yang Jeongin | I.N, Hwang Hyunjin/Yang Jeongin | I.N
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	1. enchantée

**Author's Note:**

> lmfao i hope all the french doesnt come off as pretentious im just not creative!!! 
> 
> follow my new art ig @namjoobilee !

All that wasn’t willfully told to Chan while he worked at the mansion wouldn’t be pried-into or asked about. And, in any case, the Hwang-Lee’s seemed hospitable enough. 

Bang Chan was coming up on one year since he’d dropped all of his masters classes at the Paris College of Art and started his freelancing career alongside Changbin. The decision came as a complete shock to both of their friends and family. Changbin’s mom went so far as to pull funding for her son entirely on account of it no longer going towards her son finishing out his education. 

But the best kind of music came from a place of completely untethered passion, and if Chan’s heart was telling him the integrity of his work could benefit from the self-government of freelancing, and seeing where his successes henceforth took him, then it was already as good as done. 

Changbin followed shortly after, because he and Chan’s convictions had always been entwined at the root, and it was hard to argue against what he already knew he believed in too.

So, their next course of action would be self-sustaining while selling their music alone was still nowhere near financially viable. It only took Chan a few days before he put up his brand-new job profile that advertised him as available to work full-time. The subsequent year was spent going up and down all the buildings lining Paris’s streets as a local repairman for hire; household handiwork happened to take a spot on Bang Christopher’s modest repertoire. 

In what down time he gave himself, Chan made sure to make the most of the warm Parisian backdrop that had padded out their endeavors since moving away from home. He and Changbin often found themselves having spent an entire day weaving in and out of the intoxicating patchwork of the city together, indulging and getting full on all of its distinctly conducive charms. 

It wasn’t until the year was about to turn that he’d gotten a call from Hwang-Lee Minho about the proposition for domestic employment. 

The title of the job was unfamiliar to Chan, but apparently the tasks of a handyman were the same. And it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other wealthy foreign families that decided a dreamy French countryside was where they were gonna live out their lavish whims. 

The Hwang-Lee’s could be properly decent people, Chan didn’t want to judge.

There was the insistent inkling of anxiety that wrapped itself around Chan’s gut when he realized the directions to the estate were so confusing and elaborate as a means to make sure the house was very difficult to find—like it wasn’t already out of the way enough. Chan made sure Changbin was told every last detail of where he might discover his best friend’s body as soon as he got them. 

Chan just chalked it up to nerves and a healthy dose of natural intuition.

It’d all finally brought him to tonight. 

Chan awkwardly stood at the top of one of the Hwang-Lee’s huge curving staircases with the duffle bag full of his music equipment hanging heavily from his back. He’d been stopped in his tracks by the sight of the blond Hwang-Lee counterpart leaning up against the wrought iron balcony railing, arms folded.

Hyunjin must’ve heard Chan trudging up the stairs, because he tipped his head at Chan as if he’d been waiting on him, and his full lips seemed to break into a small smile. 

“Hwang Hyunjin,” he said, his face and voice soft. 

Chan couldn’t help catching the way Hyunjin’s “Hwang” wasn’t followed by a “Lee” like Minho’s was, but his attention was quickly pulled away when Hyunjin started to move towards him. 

He walked up to Chan in a few long, strident steps, and reached out a thin hand that seemed to reflect the look of his slight figure. 

Now that he wasn’t lingering about on the sidelines of the conversation like a shy child anymore, Chan decided it was time to get a better look at the other half of Hwang-Lee. 

He was taller than Chan, but not by a lot, as he stood closer to him and blinked a pair of narrow, catlike eyes. 

It looked like, earlier, when Chan was speaking with Minho, Hyunjin’s height had been exaggerated by the willowy proportions of his body. Truly, though, his arms and legs were slender, his torso seemed narrow and refined, and his neck was like a swan’s—bewilderingly graceful, pale, and long. 

Chan didn’t usually like to spend a lot of his energy concerning himself with how another person looked, but with a wash of intrigue that made the back of his neck warmly flush, Chan was growing into the realization that Hwang Hyunjin was goddamn staggering.

It had to be at least in  _ part _ to the heaps of wealth he and Minho were probably sitting on, allotting a huge portion of it to buy the time and resources needed to take special care of how he dressed and what he looked like. The whole damn house was oozing, over-abundant, with expensive beauty. It was like he was constantly being affronted with a silky, Hyunjin-like energy at all sides of his person. 

But for as well as Hyunjin could melt into the beautiful backdrop of his home, he stood out just as strikingly against it. 

Chan cleared his throat.

“Hwang Hyunjin,” he parroted, clasping a hand around Hyunjin’s. When they touched Chan could feel in his palm how sweltering Hyunjin’s long fingers were, hot as if he was on fire just below his skin, but he let Hyunjin go before he could allow himself to start thinking anything else of it. Their rings clinked against one another when Chan pulled his hand away. 

Hyunjin’s mouth was broad, and pouted, and his lips looked soft, and plump. 

“It seems,” Hyunjin began with a little pull at the corner of his lips, folding his arms again as if he suddenly became thoughtful, “I only have the energy to show you to my room tonight, Chan-ah. I’m really sorry about that.” 

“What?” 

Chan jerked his head up in shock after he’d bent over to pick back up one of his bags. House tours didn’t usually start with the homeowner's bedrooms, right? It was normal for Chan to fumble over a confused response, before just willing the noises he made in his throat to sound like an intelligible “ _ okay _ ”, right? 

He desperately began to hope Hyunjin hadn’t been watching him as carefully as it looked like he was. 

The _last_ thing Chan needed to get caught doing right now was making a bunch of weird, completely inappropriate assumptions about one of the people who’d just given him a job, and much more than that, a place to stay. Hyunjin was good-looking, yes, maybe even stunning, gorgeous—but it would be _so_ _terrible_ on Chan’s behalf to even entertain the _idea_ of breaching all his weird, presumptuous trains of thought. He hadn’t been given any actual, real reason to. Hyunjin just made a statement, completely, objectively innocuous.

Just like all the other curious tidbits about this wealthy, off-the-grid family, Chan wasn’t gonna assume or second-guess anything without the means for it to be valid. 

Especially not what Hyunjin just said. 

_ Especially  _ not that. 

“Yep,” Hyunjin chirped.

Chan dreaded his own increasing helplessness as he watched Hyunjin bite his bottom lip and shrug.

The blond motioned with his head for Chan to follow him down into one of the decadent hallways on the second floor, Chan watching the silky, cream house robe Hyunjin had been wearing billow behind him with every step he took. 

It became apparent almost immediately that what Chan  _ really _ needed to do was to redirect his focus to anywhere but Hyunjin, because training his eyes after the back of Hyunjin’s house robe led to the same exact train of thoughts Chan was having about Hyunjin himself. 

Chan tip-toed his eyes up Hyunjin’s slim figure, and the warmth of intrigue burned his ears. The robe hung loosely off the backs of Hyunjin’s shoulders and revealed a bit of his upper back, milky-looking and dusted with pink, a few pretty moles kissing the top of one of his shoulder blades. 

The backs of Chan’s knees were sweating, was that even normal?

God, he needed to get it together. 

Chan cleared his throat again, and wrenched his eyes away. He tried settling on veering his gaze all up and down the luxurious hallway, in his strained attempt to pull his attention away from the back of Hyunjin’s body. Yep, he was gonna memorize all the second floor’s defining landmarks he could see, so when he did find his way out of the second floor, of course, he wouldn’t get lost. Maybe it would help settle the anxious, quickening flounder of his heartbeat a little easier, too. 

When Hyunjin stopped in front of what Chan made an aborted guess was his bedroom, with a feeling of dread, Chan couldn’t keep his heart from dropping straight into his ass. 

Chan could truthfully say, if he’d been told that later that Saturday afternoon, he’d be standing with a frog stuck in his throat at the bedroom door of his new boss on the same day he got hired, he would’ve asked if there’d been pigs flying around, too. 

He just didn’t think he’d be dealing with the kind of stress that he was dealing with that day, and was it a metric fuckload of stress, as he watched Hyunjin slowly push open his bedroom door. His heart was knocking like cardiac arrhythmia on his sternum, his palms felt wet. Not before he started his job as a family handyman. Not before he’d even found a place in this bigass house to start setting up his music equipment. 

_ Stop it _ , Chan quickly thought to himself, hissing it as loudly as he could in his head,  _ stop being gross _ . He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to take a steady breath in, before he stepped into Hyunjin’s bedroom, and still felt like he swallowed cotton balls and a million wads of loose-leaf paper.

Hyunjin turned back towards Chan once they were both a foot or so past the threshold and briefly caught his eye. 

Chan froze. 

_ Oh God, oh God _ . 

Hyunjin took a step towards him and reached out a hand. 

Chan wanted to  _ die _ at the wheezing sound that came out of him when Hyunjin slithered his arm right past Chan, and shut the bedroom door behind him. 

Chan didn’t want to breathe in too much of the concentrated sweet smell of various skin and hair products that radiated off of Hyunjin’s body when he leaned in close. Chan was really trying his hardest to be adamant about making as many mental roadblocks as he needed every time he felt himself starting to veer too far off-course, even now. It’s not his place to assume anything. Even when it was just him, his employer, alone, in a bedroom, less than a foot of space left between the two of their bodies.

It was scary how fast it got harder and harder for him to keep thinking straight. 

“Hey…” Chan's last attempt went, voice cracking and mouth dry. 

He let go of his bags like he’d fallen under a spell when Hyunjin picked up both of his wrists in each of his balmy, thin hands. 

Chan couldn’t ignore his thoughts with the same assuredness as before. Now more than any other time preceding that exact moment.

Hyunjin was fucking bewitching—he was too close for Chan to look away, anyway. He looked heavenly draped in his loose, silky lounge wear, and haloed by the last of the evening’s sunshine streaming through his bedroom windows. His hair looked on the cusp of being completely dry from a shower he must’ve taken earlier, and it hung just past his pretty jawline, with a few near-white strands escaping and falling into his face from where Hyunjin had parted his bangs and tucked them behind his ears. 

Did Hyunjin put everyone under his spell like this? Was everyone else just as helpless to his quiet elegance as Chan? 

Was this really all just one lonely, attractive Hwang Hyunjin, out here and practically alone on his expansive French estate, fluttering about in near-solitude inside his big house and with his piles of money, bathing in beauty and feathery blond hair? 

Chan knew better than to jump the gun on people, but, it nagged at the very edge of his brain that there was no such thing as total perfection. 

Hyunjin’s whisper into his ear, his lips just barely brushing against his skin, jolted Chan out of his own thoughts. 

“You want to sleep here tonight?” 

There it is. 

“With me?” 

A bolt of electricity fired down Chan’s spine and he let out a long, shaky sigh. 

* * *


	2. les deux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who are the Hwang-Lee brothers?

The kind of old money Hwang-Lee Minho and Hwang Hyunjin had was saturated with an astringent, precarious heritage. 

At the time Hyunjin’s family disappeared without explanation, he and Minho were too young to wager any guesses on where they might’ve gone. Within a week they were ushered out with mounds of big black bags full of euros and a Nanny to some sprawling empty estate the Hwangs bought in Bonifacio, France. There, they were given their one and only job from Minho’s father himself: to shut up and to stay quiet. 

The only contact the Lee’s ever made with the boys again was a steady transfer of money to Minho and Hyunjin’s joint bank account, and a dry, formal call every now and then.

Minho was the first to learn that the tight-lipped, sprawling overseas dealings—of which he was graciously relieved of on account of his proxied, secondhand guardianship to Hyunjin—were partially spearheaded by many members and former members of the Lee and the Hwang family. 

Neither Lee nor Hwang ever called their network of operations a “mob”, to Minho’s knowledge, and Minho agreed; to call it a mob felt a bit campy, and on-the-nose. From where Minho stood, there always seemed to be a stark absence of gun-slinging and mobster caricature, and hassling lower-level goons for a better performance in the field. He could hardly remember the last time he even saw his father wearing a proper tailored suit. That sounded like a mob to Minho, and he imagined he and Hyunjin’s family would rather not adopt an image of the sort.

However, the similarities to a mob couldn’t be argued. 

For generations, how the Lee’s and the Hwangs had been making their money was through family-owned businesses within other family-owned businesses that were firmly on the wrong side of the law. 

Laundering by drug empires and human-animal hybrid trafficking in a snapshot.

When the Hwang family disappeared, Minho figured out why somebody might’ve wanted them gone fairly soon after his briefing on what they might’ve been taking part in their whole lives. 

For the next decade, Minho and Hyunjin would be homeschooled, living remotely and low-profile, and most of all, always over-abundantly paid for. 

“Hyung,” Hyunjin piped up from his spot at the kitchen counter, “I seriously can’t eat. You know I get excited on move-in day.” 

He was picking at the plate of food Minho had prepared more than an hour earlier, having barely touched anything besides the fried tomatoes. 

Minho turned from the stovetop and pressed out a sigh. Hyunjin was always cute when he pouted, if Minho thought he was getting his way that afternoon, all he had to do was glance over at Hyunjin again. 

Gesturing with the spatula in his hand, Minho finally allowed the blond to be excused, waving him off. He rolled his eyes at the way Hyunjin immediately brightened and pushed his plate aside, slipping down off the tall barstool to rush out the kitchen.

Minho turned back to the skillet and put a hand on his hip. 

Couldn’t completely blame Hyunjin.

Getting a new residential repairman was always a nice spectacle for Minho personally, and a delightful little treat for Hyunjin. Move-in day was full of anticipation and excitement on Hyunjin’s part, because it was one thing to meet new people in town, and another to have them come right up to your door, and say they’re here to stay (and will work for you, no less). 

However, move-in day’s delight never could negate the fact that Hyunjin himself was the only one consistently ever responsible for the high turnover rates. 

For the entire latter decade of his life, Hyunjin was, what Minho lovingly called, “chronically prone” to some... rather violent tantrums, along with all the other kinds of unhinged dramatics that came with having bottomless wealth and beauty, and incredible emotional disrepair. They were usually the sole deal breakers for all the previous handymen before, and likely all the handymen to come after.

Minho knew Hyunjin didn’t mean to be _so_ cruel and overbearing, though—at least, it didn’t seem like it in the beginning stages.

For all intents and purposes, Minho thought Hyunjin quite liked to make the handymen his brand new best buddies. While not always particularly unsalacious in intent, if there was one thing Hyunjin could be credited for, it was making precise, concerted efforts to prioritize a relationship between himself and the handymen. He’d even put the handymen before the two pet hybrids, Jeongin and Seungmin. 

The first few weeks of employment were nothing short of divine for employee and employer, in Minho’s opinion.

It was that, every time the employment crept towards the three month mark, one too many run-ins with Hyunjin’s intemperate fury only ever led to one of two outcomes: an over-emotional resignation or an over-emotional discharge. 

The fact that Hyunjin decided to make a cycle out of it was one of the only things Minho didn’t try to understand. 

Minho digressed, the type of emotional pureeing that the sudden disappearance of Hyunjin’s parents, and being thrust into isolation all those years ago had done to him, left him with the kind of deep, unhealing trouble that _nobody_ would ever understand. 

He insisted that he didn’t need therapy, but more than always being angry, Hyunjin felt alone. He couldn’t replace the hybrid dog and hybrid fox, and he definitely couldn’t replace Minho, so Hyunjin decided he was going to replace the handyman. 

That was his therapy, Minho guessed. 

The applicant’s name was Bang Chan: twenty-three, a college dropout, and he was from Australia, but he spoke Korean well enough. Minho followed Hyunjin out into the front parlor where the yellow light of the afternoon sun streamed through the windows. He watched as Hyunjin pulled aside the curtains to make another of his rounds checking for any sign of the brand new handyman. 

Minho folded his arms and sighed, tutting at the way the thin silk of Hyunjin’s house robe draped over the curve of his back as he leaned. 

“Hyunjinnie, you know you shouldn’t skip meals. I can see your hip bones through your robe.” 

Hyunjin made no move to show he was listening, but Minho knew he’d heard him. Minho was all Hyunjin had that he could cherish more than a fleeting plaything, so he never had much of a choice. 

Bang Chan arrived about an hour late in a typical white van with typically modest luggage. Minho waved him in from the front porch, and once inside directed him to keep his bags with him while they sat. 

“Those’ll stay next to you, or on your person until you can finish filling out all the documents I told you about, you know, over the phone, that come with taking the job,” Minho instructed over his shoulder.

The look of Chan was unsurprising to Minho, which meant Hyunjin would be thoroughly enamored. The guy was built like he worked as a car mechanic before he decided to take the domestic handyman gig, with a thick neck and wide shoulders, and nimble-looking fingers that he only took out of his jacket pockets to sort through the documents Minho brought out to the table. His pants were dirty, and his white shirt looked dirtier, his thick boots worn and a truly ghastly sight on Minho’s handscraped hardwood floor. 

After being sat down at the grand dining room table and given a pen, Chan began filling out the documents without much fuss at all. Save for polite comments about the mansion interior, and the standard _“yes, okay. Alright, yes. Of course, yes_ ”, he was quiet, as his lips pursed, dimples appearing on his cheeks. He peered over each paper closely, then checked what needed to be checked, and signed his name. 

Minho prompted him every now and then to re-read all the fine print that would be imperative to his understanding of the circumstances of employment. Most of it was an assurance of unwavering confidentiality and the reminder that the Hwang-Lee’s would cover all fees if their handyman was to be put in any kind of danger due to the nature of the job, or for any other unforeseen reason.

Something that looked like hesitation seemed to flicker across Chan’s eyes at the mention of proximity to the dog and fox hybrids, but it dissolved away quickly, and Minho watched him sign his name. 

At the sound of the shuffling of shoes, Minho pulled his attention away for a moment to find Hyunjin, of course, lingering closeby and standing only a few meters away. 

As inconspicuous as ever, he was perched by the north wall and letting himself blend into the long shapes of the nearest window’s velvet drapery. Minho wondered if Chan had seen him already, if there was already that inexplicable pull to Hyunjin that made him so bewitching, or if Chan was ignoring it. It took most people a lot of strength to not ruminate over Hyunjin’s presence.

Minho kept Hyunjin just within his line of sight while he continued to direct Chan, with a small smile. He needed to take special care to balance his attention at the moment between the little blond moth to his left, and the podunk flame of the prospective new handyman to his right. 

“You guys are picky about who you let work for you, huh,” Chan said to Minho after half an hour or so, looking up pointedly from the papers. His black eyes didn’t give away much besides the tiniest bit of natural curiosity.

Minho met his gaze and shrugged his shoulders, smiled behind the hand that he’d been resting his chin on.

“Picky” was a fun way to put it, however, the word choice wasn’t nearly surprising enough to elicit more from him than the same exact answer he’d given for the same exact variation of question he had gotten hundreds and hundreds of times before.

“We all need people we can trust, Chan.”

Hyunjin’s amused huff echoed in the expanse of their grand dining room.

When Chan finally set the pen down, Minho noticed Hyunjin had vanished from his spot beside the window. 

Minho sighed and picked up the pen, idly tapping it against the edge of the table. That was his cue to expect to not see Hyunjin or the repairman again for the rest of the evening. 

Like Minho, Hyunjin liked to initiate the new handymen on the day of every new hire, too, and nobody except the repairman had to guess what the “initiation” might look like.

It would never stop being annoying that Minho was always left to shoulder and direct the housekeeping until mid-morning the following day as a consequence. There was still a kitchen to tidy up, paperwork to file, and one Seungmin and Jeongin to assign laundry duties to, if Minho could actually find them before they went to bed and pin them down long enough to get through all the loads. 

Minho looked back to Chan to find him with his head craning this way and that as he quietly looked about the dining room. 

“Hyunjinnie will show you around upstairs for now,” Minho prompted him, touching his hand, “you’ll get your full tour after you get some rest.” 

He smiled at Chan and stood up, gathering all the documents together in his hands. 

“Well. It was nice meeting you, Bang Chan. Hope you have a nice night.”

* * *


End file.
